A print shop handles the production and organization of documents on a large scale. For example, in addition to receiving and processing large print jobs (e.g., hundreds or thousands of documents) from a plurality of clients for printing on high-speed printers, a print shop may include a number of modules that perform post-print handling such as inserting and mailing of the documents. Because of this enhanced functionality, print shops are useful for numerous high-volume printing applications such as mass-mail printing of time sensitive statements and bills.
Each print job sent to the print shop is associated with a print workflow, which is an ordered set of activities to perform at the print shop to transform the electronic data of the print job into a deliverable physical product for a customer. A typical workflow includes a series of steps, for example, “pre-flighting” the print job to check for errors, rendering the print job, physically printing and drying the print job, proofing the printed job, generating billing for a customer, shipping, and removing the print job from the system. Because print jobs typically request different types of processing, the specific workflow associated with a given print job may vary on a job-by-job basis.
A print workflow may process a print job according to user-submitted print data files (e.g., in a Portable Document Format (PDF) file format). Additionally, each print job may be associated with metadata that has contextual information used to describe the print job and/or documents in the print job. However, in previous systems, print data and metadata are maintained separately during processing in the print workflow which results in processing inefficiencies.